Hello!

When one is faced with updating almost four months worth of, well, life, it really becomes quite daunting. I can start with, of course, today. Today, it is snowing (ick). It's also President's Day, which means that a certain portion of the work force has the day off (nice). But not I. Of course, this does make it a quicker drive into work, which is nice. I didn't expect to have much to do today, so I came in rather late, and have been doing what work is needed of me over the course of the day, but at this point, I am literally left with three messages in my inbox, all of which I either have answered, or I don't want to! (That last category is a personal email, so it's not as if I'm ignoring work either. I can't afford to ignore anything that might constitute work at this point - this is how desperate I am!) The main reason that my work situation today has reached such a dire point is that Jo Anne is not in today. So my main source of work pretty much dried up. I brought in my textbooks so that I could surreptiously try and catch up on my reading, but that somehow feels even more dishonest than surfing the web and trying to look busy while on my computer. The best thing about today, well, the second best, is that because of the holiday, I don't have class. However, all they did was shift it from Monday to Thursday. Ick again. It has nothing to do with not liking class, just, if they aren't going to have classes, then don't have classes. The whole switching them from Monday to Thursday doesn't really make our appreciation of the holiday any greater! Yeesh. The other thing to do today is go to orchestra rehearsal. It should be ok...we have our concert next Sunday, which is a bit nervewracking, because it hardly seems like we could be ready! Our work on Beethoven's fifth just isn't as far as it should be. But, I think it'll be ok. Most of the time the audience doesn't know the difference anyways. So, that's today.

Yesterday (and believe me, I'm not going to do this for all the days, but hey, this is what I remember ;) I got up a bit earlier than usual for a Sunday and I working on finishing my interview reports for the prospective Dartmouth freshmen that I had interviewed. I ended up doing six interviews, and if I'm lucky, maybe one of the kids will get in. Last year it was only one, and he was clearly the most qualified student I interviewed. But I think he really wanted to go to Stanford. I liked all of the kids I interviewed this year. There were a couple athletes, one classic overachiever, a couple laid back guys, and one girl who I liked the best (no one says you can't have favorites!). Every year that I do this, it seems as if the competition gets stiffer and stiffer. I'm sure they'll all be fine, no matter where they go - they all seemed like good kids.

So, after I did a couple reports, Jens and I made a yummy brunch with all the food groups. Then I dropped him at home, and I met my friend Kristina to go see Finding Neverland. It was really good - obviously a tearjerker, but very well done, and the acting was great. I've seen a lot of good acting this year, actually. Jens and I went to go see Million Dollar Baby, and that was just amazing. Hillary Swank deserves every award she gets. I've also gone to see The Incredibles, and Meet the Fockers, and In Good Company. IGC was also very good. I really enjoyed Topher Grace and Dennis Quaid.

The rest of yesterday was pretty mundane. I went to Target to do a bit of shopping, and then had dinner with Jens and watched The Simpsons.

As to the rest of the four months...

November was ok. I developed a case of mono somewhere along the way, and suffered through a few weeks of feeling like crap, including my trip to NYC with Jens and my family for Thanksgiving. When my mom saw me when I got to NYC, she thought I should see a doctor, so I went to a walk-in place on Friday. They took my blood, but she thought I just had a bad cold, so I loaded up on OTC remedies, which actually seemed to do the trick. I only found out that I had actually had mono a few weeks later when I talked to them about the test results! Take that, doctor! Ah well. Thanksgiving in NYC wasn't as great as I had hoped - I saw Hairspray and the Radio City Spectacular, which were both good, but otherwise I spent a lot of time sleeping and watching tv. It was really nice having Jens there, because we ended up spending all of our time together while my relatives went off and did other things.

December I finished my one class for the fall semester. I didn't end up doing as well I would have liked - apparently I bombed the last project. I had fallen a bit behind because of the not feeling well, but c'est la vie. As I keep telling Jens, grad school grades mean diddly as long as you get the frickin degree. Speaking of grad school, in December my roommate Amanda found out that she had gotten into the Tuck School at Dartmouth in the first round. She couldn't believe it, but I know she had it in her. ;) She's insanely qualified. I'll be sad to see her go, but on the other hand it does free up a space in the apartment. If all goes well, hopefully Jens and I will move in together in September, although where exactly is still to be determined. :)

Also in December I went home to Chicago to see the fam and the peeps. It was a pretty good visit. My mom's cousins were all in town, and we went to the city to see the Jackie O exhibit at the Field Museum. I also got to hang out with chica Wendy, who I hadn't seen since she got married and all, and Jamie and Michelle. Otherwise it was the usual family holiday stuff. I also went to see my cousins in Wisconsin, which was a lot of fun.

New Year's Eve Jens and I, after much deliberation, decided to do the same event that I had done last year, which was a five course dinner with paired beers. It turned out to be a great time. They misinformed us about when it started, so we got there about an hour late, but they were still able to seat us and give us all our beer. ;) We just had a lot of fun together (a recurring theme...). Karilyn and Andrew also came into town for the weekend, so it was good to see them and catch up on what married life is like.

The most exciting thing about January was that Jens and I went on our first vacation together! We decided to go to Florida so that we could go somewhere a leetle warmer, even if just for a long weekend. We booked our flights on Song, got a car, and got some great deals on hotels, even though it was technically a holiday weekend. We flew into West Palm Beach on a Thursday. We went to see this incredible mansion in WPB, the Flagler Museum, where this rail magnate (and Florida pioneer) Henry Flagler lived (five weeks a year) with his wife. It was beautiful. Then we drove down the coast on A1A, which is the only way to go. We drove by Trump's mansion. At the time we saw a lot of construction, and later I found out that that was the ballroom he was building for his wedding to Melania! So cool. We finally made it to Fort Lauderdale that night, and went out for a late dinner.

The next day it was supposed to rain a little bit, so we went to another house museum in the morning, the Bonnet Estate. It was done in a Caribbean style - all the rooms opened out onto a central courtyard. Wonderful place. In the afternoon we drove to the mother of all outlet malls, Sawgrass Mills. On the way we drove by the Motorola offices where my dad often goes on business. Sawgrass was most impressive. I bought a few things at the Ann Taylor outlet. Yum! I got some great deals. I took Jens to the Gap outlet and had him try on some new jeans and khakis. He seems to really like the jeans, as now he wears them all the time! They do look mighty fine, I must say. After the outlet, we drove down to Miami to our next hotel, a Ramada that was right on North Miami Beach. We even got a room with a partial ocean view. That night we went out to this cute little Italian restaurant in Miami Beach. We had our favorite salad, the caprese, and the entrees were delicious. We even had to decide against dessert because we were too full!

The next day we hit SoBe (that is, South Beach). We started the day by touring this Spanish monastery that was originally from the 11th century but had been brought over to the US and rebuilt in its entirety. It was a pretty neat thing to see. Then we drove down to South Beach. They just happened to be having a street fair right along Ocean Road, so we walked up and down that and saw all of the old art deco hotels. We also spent a lot of time on Lincoln Road, this semi-funky pedestrian mall with lots of shops and restaurants. That night we went to go see In Good Company, and then afterwards bought some B&Js and ate it in our room while watching SNL. :) Sunday we checked out, and then drove out to the Everglades for a tour. We saw some crocodiles, birds, and other Floridian wildlife. It was neat to see something so natural after being in Miami Beach! Then we drove back to WPB for our flight to Boston. It was such a fun time. Jens is all about the driving and I am all about the maps. :) It was nice spending a few consecutive days with just him and me and no distractions.

The weekend before last, we went up to Dartmouth for Winter Carnival weekend, which was also fun. We went to both the men's hockey games (and Dartmouth won both of them!), and also did some skiing. I was deathly afraid at first, but I eventually remembered enough about how to ski to be able to go down the novice trail by myself - that was a first time ever sort of thing. I would like to be better at skiing (Jens is a whiz, seeing as how he was on his high school team) but I think in the end I just don't do well when things go straight down.

So, that pretty much covers the fun happenings in my life for the past four months. School has started up again for the spring semester, and so far so good. The classes are quite interesting. Work has been fairly crazy busy since mid-December, but I'm just sort of in a lull here right now. Work definitely goes in waves - either I'm too busy or not busy enough! :) And...Jens. Well, what can I say? He's the best. Anyways, time to go outside and clean off my car and head to orchestra. If tomorrow is as slow as today, I just may have more to say tomorrow. ;) (egads - I haven't even commented on TV!)